Citaten

I have no means of recovering what I have experienced and known –except only by visiting the Imperial Archives in Constantinople, the rooms where the reports of the spies are kept. Then I cold see my work again, perhaps even make copies. I could edit and collate the material. Even, one day, I could publish, with suitable omissions and abridgments of course. A book, Excellency! What happiness that would give me.

pagina 46

Forty-five years I have been in the world. All those moments of perception and sensation, pulse beats of my life, reduced to this. I have no family, no children, no great possessions. A woman to cry for me, a yali on the Bosphoros, such things would at least be tangible evidence of a life. As it is, five minutes’ work of clearance would remove forever all evidence of my existence. Other occupants there will be, knowing nothing of Basil Zavier Pascali.

pagina 47

I know that by these confessions I will have increased your contempt for me. But they are connected, they are necessary. Besides, you need contempt to sustain your position. God is fed on contempt, they say.

pagina 99

Flowers on the stall, people passing, Yannis standing morosely in the evening sun at the hotel entrance-I can only make these things exist by naming them, interiorly mouthing the words.

pagina 139

Excellency, I do not believe him. I think Lydia is in love with him, or at least that he has succeeded in making his life and purpose vitally important to her-which amounts to the same thing.

pagina 157

To talk about truth as something that can be marched up to and arrested seems solemnly mad to me. (…) You are left with something in your hands but not what you wanted.